Candles are lit.

Latkes are fried.

Dreidels are spun.

Jewish people across campus and the world have been celebrating the Festival of Lights as Hanukkah continues until Monday evening.

“I celebrate Hanukkah by spending time with family and friends, decorating my house and lighting the candles,” junior Gabi Malyar said. “It is an important holiday to me because it reminds me of my privileges and blessings.”

But despite its popularity in the United States, Hanukkah is not the most important occasion on the Hebrew calendar as it is not mentioned in the Talmud, and is not considered one of the High Holidays of Judaism,

“I think the biggest reason [for Hanukkah’s popularity] has to do with the fact that Hanukkah often overlaps with Christmas like it is this year,” Director of the Schustermann Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Texas at Austin Dr. Jonathan Kaplan said. “It creates a holiday for American Jewish identity and creates space for Jewish practice and observance in the midst of that cultural rhythm. It gives you something to do other than eat Chinese food on Christmas, right?”

The Story of Hanukkah

For many people on campus, the history of Hanukkah isn’t as widely known as some other religious celebrations. The most commonly shared story behind Hanukkah involves the Maccabees celebrating taking back a Jewish temple, and oil that was meant to last only one night lasted eight. However, what many scholars agree to be the full story behind Hanukkah is a much longer tale; many believe that the Maccabees staged a revolt, and regained control of their Temple, forming the foundation behind Hanukkah’s eight day celebration.

“That revolt eventually ends about a year later in a kind of temporary reassertion of Jewish control over the temple and a rededication, hence Hanukkah, of the temple,” Kaplan said. “Now  that action of rededication is an eight day festival, celebrated for eight days because the temple was originally dedicated, according to the Book of Kings, over the eight day period during the Jewish Festival Sukkot.”

The widely circulated story of Hanukkah may have merit, however scholars such as Kaplan believe that it was implemented after people began to celebrate the holiday.

“Now, that basic idea that Hanukkah is supposed to celebrate a military victory that eventually led to Jewish assertion of control over the temple, is not something the rabbis really liked,” Kaplan said. “They’re living under foreign control, and don’t want to risk upsetting the local overlords by talking about it. That’s just one explanation for it.”

Along with a mixed-up story, Hanukkah is also one of the few Jewish holidays not mentioned in the Talmud.

“The interesting thing is that Hanukkah is one of those holidays that you celebrate, well, a few holidays actually, that is not mentioned in the Talmud, the Jewish Bible,” Kaplan said. “There is perhaps an illusion to the rededication of the temple in a book called The Book of Daniel, but Hanukkah as the holiday itself was not mentioned. So for that reason it falls later than all of the rest of the holidays. Hanukkah is essentially the newest holiday on the block in Judaism.”

Although the story of the oil may not be the true source of the eight-day festival, modern-day celebrations still revolve around the core components of lighting a Hanukkiah and eating foods that are made with oil.

“I usually celebrate with family friends,” senior Alex Vasilkovsky said. “We light candles, eat fried foods like latkes and sufganiyot. We also play dreidel.”

Rise in Antisemitism

But in the midst of Hanukkah, there’s been a recent rise in antisemitism. According to the Anti-Defamation League, there were 2,717 antisemitic incidents across the U.S. in 2021, a 34 percent increase from the 2,026 incidents recorded in 2020.

While this increase in antisemitic incidents is more recent, the rhetoric being used by many antisemites has been present for decades. One of the most common tropes relates to Jewish control of a variety of sectors and areas, from the FBI to Hollywood. According to the Director of the Gale Collaborative on Jewish Life in the Americas at the University of Texas at Austin Dr. Naomi Lindstrom, much of this comes from a book published in 1903: The Protocol of the Elders of Zion.

“I think that that idea really came from all these conspiracy theories about Jews control, this, that the other – I think that comes from a fake treatise called the protocols of the Elders of Zion,” Lindstrom said. “When you read it, it’s supposedly the minutes or the agenda of this meeting of tribal elders, of the Jewish people who are sitting around scheming how to absolutely take over everything. When you see editions of it, it often has things like a Jewish serpent or octopus grabbing hold of the entire world.”

A prominent figure who has recently gotten a lot of attention for his antisemitic hate speech is Kanye West. Now known as Ye, his remarks have ranged from antisemitic rhetoric conflating Jews and finance, to threats about going “Death-Con 3” on Jewish people.

“This idea of controlling the world, and I think that’s where a lot of the current anti-Semitic theories we’re seeing, that’s their locus,” Lindstrom said. “That’s where they’ll come from. Most of the stuff he’s spouting is really just a modernized version of the protocols of the elders of Zion.”

Antisemitic tropes not only source from the Elders of Zion, but also from the historical roles of Jewish people.

“One that you see a lot in Spain particularly has to do with economics,” Lindstrom said. “A lot of the Christians were, because of religious strictures, forbidden from being lenders charging interest. So they would always think of a Jewish person as being a money lender, and you tend to resent the person you owe money to.”

These tropes have persisted throughout history and time, bringing many to wonder why the current spike of antisemitic hate is happening now. To Kaplan, recent antisemitic mindsets among Americans are not new and are revealing the long-existing problem of antisemitism.

“The question is how did we get to this place where someone can say this stuff publicly, and then people had to respond to it. Why was he brought up in a world where these tropes and discourses were a part of society,” Kaplan said. “Even if you push antisemitism back under the radar where it has really existed since World War II, and throughout the 60s, 70s, 80s. Then, it was viewed as unacceptable for public discourse, but it is still percolating among large parts of the U.S. population and the world population.”

A change in current antisemitism can be traced to a certain extent from social media according to Lindstrom.

“Social media certainly amplified [antisemitism],” she said. “I mean, all kinds of things that just would be previously considered, you know, unhinged, celebrity rambling. Suddenly, millions of people know about it instantly. So it’s a much bigger echo chamber than we had previously.”

The effect of public officials using antisemitic rhetoric, especially with the aid of social media, can have consequences beyond the online sphere according to Kaplan.

“I think anytime the people who are public officials utter antisemitic traits, even unintentionally.  . or support in any way, shape or form, antisemitic groups, you run the risk of normalizing this for large swaths of the population,” Kaplan said. “I think continuing the last six or so years, people felt and thought these things, it just was not really acceptable to say them out loud. And [now saying it out loud] is a kind of first step to normalizing that because then it becomes part of public discourse, which is kind of a first step towards violence.”

For Vasilkovsky, these tropes have carried into her everyday life.

“I have experienced some antisemitism. Usually, it comes in the form of ill-meaning jokes,” she said. “I’ve had people make jokes about Jews being cheap, having big noses, etc, after I told them that I was Jewish. Someone threw a penny on the ground and expected me to pick it up. Others have made gas chamber jokes to purposefully make me feel uncomfortable.”

According to Kaplan, a portion of this rise in antisemitism can be attributed to a lack of education on Jewish life and the Jewish experience in America.

“People need to be continuously educated about, you know, Jewish experiences,” he said. “Most people, they know the Jews exist, but beyond that, they really don’t know what they are, who they are and why they are. Then it’s easier in that space to understand them to be a nefarious group who’s working from a global destruction, right? So if you learn more about Jewish life, you’re less likely to view them as distanced and therefore, find it acceptable to denigrate them.”

Although the recent spike in antisemitism has caused fear for many Jewish people, the celebration of Hanukkah can provide a sense of solidarity and reunion among the community.

“Sociologists of religion would look at Hanukkah as a kind of ritual that helps create solidarity,” Kaplan said. “I think that [Hanukkah as a time to reunite for the Jewish community] is a fair analysis of things from a kind of religious studies perspective. I’m not going to prescribe that to the Jewish community per se, but, you know, I just think an outside scholar would look at it and say, rituals are important. Creating connection among us people who share values and share Jewish life ethnicity as well.”

This story was originally published on Wingspan on December 22, 2022.